The Musical Gift tells Sri Lanka's music history as a story of giving between humans and nonhumans, and between populations defined by difference. Author Jim Sykes argues that in the recent past, the genres we recognize today as Sri Lanka's esteemed traditional musics were not originally about ethnic or religious identity, but were gifts to gods and people intended to foster protection and/or healing. Noting that the currently assumed link between music and identity helped produce the narratives of ethnic difference that drove Sri Lanka's civil war (1983-2009), Sykes argues that the promotion of connected music histories has a role to play in post-war reconciliation. The Musical Gift includes a study of how NGOs used music to promote reconciliation in Sri Lanka, and it contains a theorization of the relations between musical gifts and commodities. Eschewing a binary between the gift and identity, Sykes claims the world's music history is largely a story of entanglement between both paradigms. Drawing on fieldwork conducted widely across Sri Lanka over a span of eleven years-including the first study of Sinhala Buddhist drumming in English and the first ethnography of music-making in the former warzones of the north and east-this book brings anthropology's canonic literature on "the gift" into music studies, while drawing on anthropology's recent "ontological turn" and "the new materialism" in religious studies.

Sense and Sadness is an innovative study of music modality in relation to human emotion and the aesthetics of perception. It is also a musical story of survival through difficulty and pain. Focusing on chant at St George's Syrian Orthodox Church of Aleppo, author Tala Jarjour puts forward the concept of the emotional economy of aesthetics, which enables a new understanding of modal musicality in general and of Syriac musicality in particular. Jarjour combines insights from musicology and ethnomusicology, sound and religious studies, anthropology, history, East Christian and Middle Eastern studies, and the study of emotion, to seamlessly weave together multiple strands of a narrative which then becomes the very story it tells. Drawing on imagination and metaphor, she brings to the fore overlapping, at times contradictory, modes of sense and sense making. At once intimate and analytical, this ethnographic text entwines academic thinking with its subject(s) and subjectivities, portraying events, writing, people, and music as they unfold together through ritual commemorations and a devastating, ongoing war.

Hiplife is a popular music genre in Ghana that mixes hip-hop beatmaking and rap with highlife music, proverbial speech, and Akan storytelling. In the 1990s, young Ghanaian musicians were drawn to hip-hop's dual ethos of black masculine empowerment and capitalist success. They made their underground sound mainstream by infusing carefree bravado with traditional respectful oratory and familiar Ghanaian rhythms. "Living the Hiplife" is an ethnographic account of hiplife in Ghana and its diaspora, based on extensive research among artists and audiences in Accra, Ghana's capital city; New York; and London. Jesse Weaver Shipley examines the production, consumption, and circulation of hiplife music, culture, and fashion in relation to broader cultural and political shifts in neoliberalizing Ghana.

Shipley shows how young hiplife musicians produce and transform different kinds of value--aesthetic, moral, linguistic, economic--using music to gain social status and wealth, and to become respectable public figures. In this entrepreneurial age, youth use celebrity as a form of currency, aligning music-making with self-making and aesthetic pleasure with business success. Registering both the globalization of electronic, digital media and the changing nature of African diasporic relations to Africa, hiplife links collective Pan-Africanist visions with individualist aspiration, highlighting the potential and limits of social mobility for African youth.

The author has also directed a film entitled "Living the Hiplife" and with two DJs produced mixtapes that feature the music in the book available for free download.

Arab Music: A survey of its history and modern practice is primarily meant for the general Western reader with some basic knowledge of music and music notation. It aims at correcting the still prevalent romantic image of Arab music, spread in the 19th century, as exotic and typified by long, plaintive and erotic sounding melodic lines and inciting rhythms. It offers the reader a comprehensive survey of the history and the development of Arab music and musical theory from its pre-Islamic roots until 1970, as well as a discussion of the major genres and forms practiced today, such as the Egyptian gil, the Algerian rai and Palestinian hip hop. Other topics touched upon are musical instruments and folk music. The analysis of each genre is accompanied by a complete musical notation of an exemplary composition or improvisation, including lyrics and translation.

Unique and complex in style, traditional Chinese music forms a fascinating part of China's cultural heritage. This accessible, illustrated introduction to Chinese music takes the reader through the 8000-year history of China's musical instruments, the diversity of Chinese folk music, the development of China's famous operas and the modern Chinese music industry. From classical to contemporary styles, Jin Jie explores the influence that Chinese music has had around the world.

Who are "the folk" in folk music? This book traces the musical culture of these elusive figures in Britain and the US during a crucial period of industrialization from 1870 to 1930, and beyond to the contemporary alt-right. Drawing on a broad, interdisciplinary range of scholarship, The Folk examines the political dimensions of a recurrent longing for folk culture and how it was called upon for radical and reactionary ends at the apex of empire. It follows an insistent set of disputes surrounding the practice of collecting, ideas of racial belonging, nationality, the poetics of nostalgia, and the pre-history of European fascism. Deeply researched and beautifully written, Ross Cole provides us with a biography of a people who exist only as a symptom of the modern imagination, and the archaeology of a landscape directing flows of global populism to this day.

This volume makes available, for the first time in English, some of the major writings of the Romanian ethnomusicologist Constantin Brailoiu. Despite the size and importance of his work and the fact that he was one of the leading ethnomusicologists of his day, Brailoiu has hitherto remained little known to English-speaking scholars. A. L. Lloyd has performed a valuable service by translating a collection of some of his most important theoretical works. These works are the product of meticulous fieldwork and methodological reflection. Brailoiu's broad-minded approach to both the musicological and sociological problems confronted has ensured that they remain indispensable material for all ethnomusicologists.

World Musics in Context is a wide-ranging survey of musics of the world, in their historical and social contexts, from ancient times to the present day. Ethnomusicologist Peter Fletcher begins by describing aspects of musical style and function in relation to the early developments of civilizations. He then goes on to explore, in five parts, music of the ancient world, music of Africa and Asia, European music, North and South American traditions, and music of the modern world. A compendium of information as well as an examination of musical causation and function, this book gives a deeper understanding of the various musical traditions that contribute to the modern, multicultural environment.

In this detailed study Simha Arom takes a new and original approach to the understanding of the complex and sophisticated patterns of polyphony and polyrhythm that characterise African music. Considering in particular the harp, sanza, xylophone and percussion music of Central Africa, Simha Arom develops a a rigorous method for the analysis of the music and for the recording and deciphering of the many strands of polyphony and polyrhythm. Through a systematic breakdown of the many layers of apparently improvised rhythm he reveals the essential structure which underlies this rich and complex music. Inspired also by linguistic techniques, Professor Arom regards the music very much as a grammatical system.

Who are "the folk" in folk music? This book traces the musical culture of these elusive figures in Britain and the US during a crucial period of industrialization from 1870 to 1930, and beyond to the contemporary alt-right. Drawing on a broad, interdisciplinary range of scholarship, The Folk examines the political dimensions of a recurrent longing for folk culture and how it was called upon for radical and reactionary ends at the apex of empire. It follows an insistent set of disputes surrounding the practice of collecting, ideas of racial belonging, nationality, the poetics of nostalgia, and the pre-history of European fascism. Deeply researched and beautifully written, Ross Cole provides us with a biography of a people who exist only as a symptom of the modern imagination, and the archaeology of a landscape directing flows of global populism to this day.

An exemplary investigation into music and sustainability, Singing and Survival tells the story of how music helped the Rapanui people of Easter Island to preserve their unique cultural heritage. Easter Island (or Rapanui), known for the iconic headstones (moai) that dot the island landscape, has a remarkable and enduring presence in global popular culture where it has been portrayed as a place of mystery and fascination, and as a case study in societal collapse. These portrayals often overlook the remarkable survival of the Rapanui people who rebounded from a critically diminished population of just 110 people in the late nineteenth century to what is now a vibrant community where indigenous language and cultural practices have been preserved for future generations. This cultural revival has drawn on a diversity of historical and contemporary influences: indigenous heritage, colonial and missionary influences from South America, and cultural imports from other Polynesian islands, as well as from tourism and global popular culture. The impact of these influences can be perceived in the island's contemporary music culture. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Easter Island music, with individual chapters devoted to the various streams of cultural influence from which the Rapanui people have drawn to rebuild and reinforce their music, their performances, their language and their presence in the world. In doing so, it provides a counterpoint to deficit discourses of collapse, destruction and disappearance to which the Rapanui people have historically been subjected.

Shortlisted for the 2021 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Australian History. Representing Australian Aboriginal Music and Dance 1930-1970 offers a rethinking of recent Australian music history. In this open access book, Amanda Harris presents accounts of Aboriginal music and dance by Aboriginal performers on public stages. Harris also historicizes the practices of non-Indigenous art music composers evoking Aboriginal music in their works, placing this in the context of emerging cultural institutions and policy frameworks. Centralizing auditory worlds and audio-visual evidence, Harris shows the direct relationship between the limits on Aboriginal people's mobility and non-Indigenous representations of Aboriginal culture. This book seeks to listen to Aboriginal accounts of disruption and continuation of Aboriginal cultural practices and features contributions from Aboriginal scholars Shannon Foster, Tiriki Onus and Nardi Simpson as personal interpretations of their family and community histories. Contextualizing recent music and dance practices in broader histories of policy, settler colonial structures, and postcolonizing efforts, the book offers a new lens on the development of Australian musical cultures. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Australian Research Council.